One Nation, Under Experiment by Ken Sanders
www.dissidentvoice.org
June 16, 2005

Ostensibly,
the Food and Drug Administration ("FDA"), as well as the Environmental
Protection Agency ("EPA"), are regulatory agencies entrusted to protect
the health and safety of the public. However, as starkly revealed by
recent events, neither the FDA nor the EPA is particularly concerned about
the public. Rather, they see us as test subjects, lab rats, to be
exploited for experimentation by or on behalf of the chemical and
pharmaceutical industries.

Take, for instance, the April threat by
Senators Bill Nelson and Barbara Boxer to block Bush's nomination of
Stephen Johnson to head the EPA. The Senators took exception to the EPA's
CHEERS (Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study) program, in
which low-income, minority families were promised up to $970.00 if they
allowed the application of pesticides and other chemicals in rooms
primarily occupied by their infant children. The study was partially
funded by the American Chemistry Council, a lobbying arm of pesticide
manufacturers, to the tune of $2 million. Johnson promised to terminate
the CHEERS program in exchange for his confirmation.

Nothing like exploiting infants and the poor
on behalf of the pesticide industry.

The CHEERS program is not a mere anomaly.
During his confirmation, Johnson revealed that EPA is conducting more than
250 other experiments on human subjects. Several of those experiments
involve testing chemicals on children, including: exposing children to a
pesticide (chlorpyrifos) that was banned for residential use in 2000;
paying children to inhale methanol vapors at levels described as "a worst
case scenario"; and having asthmatic children inhale harmful ultra fine
carbon particles.

In fact, after Johnson became Acting
Assistant Administrator in 2001 of EPA's Office of Prevention, Pesticides,
and Toxic Substances (OPPTS), EPA institutionalized chemical testing on
human subjects. In 2003, the EPA reversed its policy of refusing to accept
research involving the testing of pesticides on human subjects. The
reversal came after what can only be described as a "friendly" lawsuit by
the pesticide industry to force the EPA to reverse its policy. Like when a
husband sues his wife to recover under her insurance policy following a
car wreck, there was nothing legitimately adversarial about the lawsuit.
Indeed, EPA didn't truly defend against the suit - the Natural Resources
Defense Council did after intervening on EPA's behalf.

Currently, the EPA considers results of
industry tests of pesticides upon human subjects on a "case-by-case
basis." The EPA has no safeguards in place to protect infants, neonates,
pregnant women, and prisoners, although it promises to adopt such
protections sometime in the future. Additionally, EPA's "case-by-case"
analysis does not require industry to abide by such ethical principles as
obtaining the informed consent of its subjects and avoiding inappropriate
inducements.

The only condition placed by EPA on
industry's ability to test pesticides on human subjects is that there not
be "clear evidence" that the test was "fundamentally unethical." Of
course, neither "clear evidence" nor "fundamentally unethical" are defined
by EPA. Shouldn't be difficult for industry to satisfy that standard.

Similarly, under Bush's FDA, concern for the
health and well-being of walking and talking people is all but
nonexistent. Take, for instance, the recent revelations regarding the
fatal side-effects of the COX-2 inhibitors Vioxx, Celebrex, and Bextra.
Despite the mountain of evidence that the drugs unduly increased the risk
of heart attacks and strokes, the FDA's advisory committee voted in
February to allow the continued marketing of the drugs.

As it turns out, 10 of the 32 members of
that advisory committee were affiliated with the manufacturers of COX-2
inhibitors. Another 17 members of the committee were affiliated to other
drug manufacturers. According to the New York Times' analysis of the
advisory committee's vote, the committee would not have approved further
marketing of the drugs had the conflicted scientists not been allowed to
vote.

Following the COX-2 debacle, resulting in
the drugs' removal from the market, the FDA announced the formation of its
new Drug Safety Oversight Board (DSB). The DSB, however, has no real
authority, like the authority to order a harmful drug be pulled from the
market. What's more, while touted as an independent body within the FDA, a
majority of the DSB members are also senior managers of the department
responsible for approving the drugs in the first place. Finally, unlike
those of FDA advisory committees, the DSB's deliberations will be closed
to the public.

The FDA's disregard for the public's safety
is not a new phenomenon. Since Bush took office, the FDA has become
increasingly lax in ensuring the public's safety. FDA enforcement against
false and misleading advertisements by pharmaceutical companies has
declined 70 percent since 2001. The FDA's decreased enforcement is
commensurate with the pharmaceutical industry's 61 percent increase in
prescription drug advertising.

In sum, embryos that might develop into
people should be protected but not actual people.

That seems to be the way of the Bush
administration, conservative Republicans, and radical Christians. When it
comes to fetuses and embryos, they will fight like hell to protect the
rights of the unborn. Once those fetuses and embryos exit the womb,
however, as far as Bush and like-minded conservatives and fundamentalists
are concerned, all of their maudlin sympathy goes out the window.